CMV: Human exploration of Mars in our lifetimes will have little to no benefit to humanity as a whole

When I was in my early 20's I read some books by Robert Zubrin and was convinced that the human exploration of Mars was something of a moral imperative. I assumed that said exploration would only be better if it happened as soon as feasible. Eventually I met Robert Zubrin and many other Mars enthusiast but was kind of put off by that community for various reasons. I still believed that Mars was humanities best option for salvation though but more specifically that human exploration was the only way to really get Mars ready for people. However, after seeing the slow progress of space exploration in the past 10 years and the unrelenting deterioration of the Climate and of world politics I'm see human exploration of Mars as way too costly with no real benefits for almost all of our descendants for hundreds if not thousands of years a time scale that won't help us avoid much of the death and suffering that we could face for various reasons in the meantime. Now I believe that robotic exploration of space, and of Mars specifically is an important first step in preparing the planet to being a backup biosphere for descendants of Earth life but human exploration in our lifetime doesn't benefit that goal enough to warrant the cost and dangers. Maybe someday the equation will change and sustaining human exploration of Mars will be easy but now it seems like there are too many cost and too many obstacles to waste so many resources on what would basically be the equivalent of scaling Everest, satisfying for the people who do it and exploration nerds but pointless to almost everyone else. On a personal note I would still want to be a Martian colonist (or at least explorer) if give the opportunity but if I were in charge of the world I wouldn’t even bother spending the trillions it would cost to start sending people. If instead we spent the same amount of resources on robotic exploration we could greatly advance science without every putting a human in harm’s way. More advanced robotic exploration technology on Mars would set us up for terraforming the planet much sooner than for an equal investment in human exploration since robotic activities can be scaled up quicker and you don’t need to consider how terraforming projects might affect the humans that might do it.

So yes making Mars inhabitable may be a worthwhile project but it doesn’t need people just large scale engineering. If Mars really did become a planet sized spaceship akin to Earth it could have a huge impact on human wellbeing for generations but the process of getting their would only possibly improve the lives of the human Martian explorers were there any and not the 99.99% of the population that wouldn’t get to go.

After I think estimates for a first round of human exploration of Mars could run an extra 100billion a year for NASA’s budget whereas that amount put into robotic exploration of the planet could move automated exploration and engineering technology forward much much quicker than it would move human exploration technology and techniques.

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